


shipbreaking

by malfaisant



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 22:46:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13133793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malfaisant/pseuds/malfaisant
Summary: “If there was anyone who’d appreciate my unhappiness, I would have thought it'd be you,” says Thor.





	1. Chapter 1

At their current speed, it will take them roughly five hundred days to reach Midgard.

The logistics of caring for a ship full of refugees—the remnants of a once-proud people, now displaced and dispossessed—demands a particular sort of king, the kind of king that Loki once believed his foolish, foolhardy brother can never become, even given a thousand, or ten thousand years. Yet observing Thor now, managing the day-to-day trials of ruling, the inglorious bureaucracy of governance, thankless and tiresome—Loki is forced to admit that he can't have been more wrong if he tried.

Thor is a good king, bearing the responsibilities of his position with patience and grace, with _wisdom_ , even if true cunning still eluded him. Duty is his royal staff and tired dignity his crown, and he exists wholly for the will and well-being of his people.

They are seven days into their journey to Earth, and Loki is a hair’s breadth away from stabbing Thor and throwing him out of an airlock.

It is a testament to his own personal growth that he decides against it, as it can only be counterproductive.

For all that he used to know Thor like the back of his hand, Loki realises that he’s been much too preoccupied in recent years to see all the ways his brother had changed. Granted, he didn’t have the best vantage point, standing as he’d been behind Thor, busy twisting some knife in his back…but the proximity alone should have afforded him some level of insight, or so Loki would protest.

(—an image comes unbidden to his mind, the back of his hand, frost cracking through his metal vambrace like glass, his pale Aesir skin turning into deep cobalt blue before his very eyes, he never knew anything at all—)

The loss of an eye aside, there are lines on Thor’s face that weren’t there before, and a heaviness in the set of his shoulders, as if kingship is also a physical burden in addition to being a spiritual one. These last five years have aged him more than the last five centuries combined, aging him as if he were a mere mortal.

The years have not left Loki unchanged either, nor have they been any kinder to him, but he’s well aware of their ravages upon his person. It can’t, _doesn’t_ catch him off-guard as Thor’s transformation has. But perhaps that’s why he missed it in the first place, distracted as he was with his own personal upheavals.

Because neither of them are the same as they once were, and neither of them can return—yet Loki is still Loki, a knife sharpened and sharpened to a point until overly brittle, but still fundamentally himself. Whereas Thor has been put to the anvil, beaten and hammered from white hot metal to something entirely new, the true shape of which Loki still hasn’t fully discerned (the steam of the forge has yet to dissipate).

It is…disconcerting, that Thor should have changed so much when Loki wasn’t looking. Loki hasn’t yet decided if he hates him for it.

But now that he is looking, now that he’s truly paying attention to Thor once again, he is overwhelmed by a sense of vague anticipation. Not dread–he doesn’t quite know if he can ever learn to truly fear his brother–but an electric charge building in the air, making his skin tingle. The low rumbling of thunder, preluding a deluge.

Loki knows a mask when he sees one. Thor is running himself thin, his composure barely held and fraying at the seams. Any moment now, the King of Asgard is going to snap.

He can taste rain on the tip of his tongue, the brewing of an oncoming storm. Odin All-Father sacrificed his eye for the wisdom of ages—Loki wonders if Thor sacrificed something far greater, something unseen. Loki wonders if, whatever it has bought his brother, the cost of it all was far too dear.

*

Aboard the starship, the concept of time is more malleable. Tolling bells announce the hours over the ship’s loudspeakers, carving up the days to emulate how they would have passed back on their homeworld, but the artifice of it all is conspicuous without the rising of their suns, the setting of their moons.

It is late at night, or what passes for night on the Ark, as the people have taken to calling their makeshift home. In the hallways outside Thor’s quarters, Loki lets his projection falter behind him, continuing his conversation with their head healer regarding their medical supplies. He’s helping out in sickbay, tending still to the injured, and while the common folk are respectfully wary of their infamous prince using magic in their midst, they are not foolish enough to refuse the help.

It is what Thor would’ve asked of him, if he had not forestalled the request and just taken it upon himself to do it. They are his people after all, and he their former king; his affection for them is mercurial, conditional, and the kind reserved for pitiful, helpless things, but it is affection nonetheless.

While his projection speaks with Eir, his voice audible through the walls, Loki passes as a shadow through the doorway of Thor’s room. Not that Thor barred the way at all–he keeps his doors open, inviting anyone on the ship to approach him directly with all their troubles and concerns. But Loki wanted the opportunity to observe Thor undetected.

His magnanimous brother-king hears all petitioners and supplicants, and they scarcely leave him unoccupied for long. He mediates disputes, attends council meetings, pores over manifests and ship logs and trade pacts with Vanaheim, Alfheim, Nidavellir–places where they may still be able to call upon old alliances, if not friends. Where before they lived in a golden palace with rooms reserved exclusively for each task, now Thor’s living quarters double as his office.

Even now, Thor is hunched over a table, papers piled high, scrolls trailing to the floor, maps and star-charts unfurled. He is going over the latest report from engineering: the maintenance tasks that still need to be performed, the supplies they need for such repairs, and how short they are of both parts and workers to handle any of these problems. There are dark circles underneath his eyes, and his shoulders are slumped, in this moment where there is no need to project fortitude before his people.

After a few minutes, Thor sits up, and throws his arms above his head to stretch. He rubs tiredly at his face and, without looking up from the report, says, “The door was open. You could’ve just walked in.”

The overhead lights flicker, and Loki’s form appears. “Your Majesty,” Loki says with an irreverent bow of his head.

Thor turns around in his seat to face Loki, who has walked the scant distance across the room to sit on the edge of Thor’s bed.

“When was the last time you slept?” Loki asks.

His brother grins widely. “If I didn’t know any better, I would say you were worried about me.”

“For your own sake, I hope you _do_ know better.”

“More or less,” Thor says with a shrug. “Let’s assume for a moment that I do. So what did you want, Loki?”

“Maybe I was scouting for some opportune moment to stab you in the back and take the throne for myself,” says Loki. “Open doors are such a tempting invitation for trouble.”

Thor laughs, which doesn’t help Loki’s valuation of his self-preservation instincts. “Such an attempt would relieve me of having to keep reading this report. It’s impressive how many words our engineers need to tell me how screwed we are.”

The laughter grates on Loki’s nerves. “Far be it from me to dissuade you from reading,” he says icily. “Our old tutors would attest that it had never been one of your strong suits, after all, pity they are all dead–but if you can find it in yourself to accept my humble counsel, surely you’re aware that one of the things you can do as king is to delegate duties?”

“And you in turn know quite well how dangerously short-handed we are, as much as I’d love to defer to your style of ruling,” says Thor, his irritating good-humour unfazed. He gestures at the engineering report. “Of course, I welcome your counsel gladly, my dear brother, especially if it includes anything on how we are to make it to Midgard with only half the necessary supplies for such a journey.”

When the Ark had been seized by the freak wormhole that landed it on Sakaar, it was a merchant freight vessel, refashioned by The Grandmaster as a convenient escape pod for a rainy day. But it was never meant to accommodate the needs of an entire race, escaping extinction with only what they could carry on their backs. So while they are remarkably well-stocked of opulent, useless things, their on-board supplies gear more towards the luxury of a few than the long-term survival of many. At least they aren’t short on alcohol.

But they are Asgard, and they are a long-lived, resourceful people, revered throughout the cosmos as gods. There are grain and seed stocks for their sorcery to work with, tools and spare parts for salvage, valuable goods for trading, if they can only find someone to trade with. They will hold out just fine.

And yet, Thor knows all this, better than Loki does. Thor _believes_ in their people, more deeply than Loki ever will. Thor is a self-sacrificing fool, but that is not reason enough for him to choose to _exhaust_ himself like this.

Loki stands and walks towards Thor, until he stands over his shoulder. Thor’s lone eye is fixed on him, unblinking, unreadable. When had his brother become so inscrutable to him?

Loki’s hand hovers over the report, his finger running down the page. “Our people were once voyagers, were we not?” he says quietly, before in a more normal voice, “It’s not as if I’m unfamiliar with having to solve all your problems for you.”

Thor leans back in his seat and smiles, more an upward quirk of his lips than anything, and motions for Loki to pull up a chair.


	2. Chapter 2

If Loki cannot stop his foolish brother from overworking himself, there are other ways to lessen Thor’s burden. Not a mean task, when Thor insists on carrying the world on his shoulders alone. Once–quite recently even–Loki would’ve spat in his face for such arrogance _…_ and Loki still might, if only he can convince himself that arrogance is all it is.

Thor, true to his word, welcomes whatever advice Loki deigns to offer, even if he doesn’t care to offer it so straightforwardly. A whisper here and there in the right ear will travel a course through the right people, until it reaches the king as surely as if he had told it to Thor’s face directly. Loki takes to the shadows and offers what help he can to the ship, though keeping in mind that good deeds never go unpunished. Hopefully anyone paying attention will simply chalk it up as some weird fit of _noblesse oblige_.

He continues to assist Eir and her healers, provides their botanists and engineers with spells from forgotten books. There are many projects to oversee–the conversion of hangar 6 into a second oxygen garden, the installation of auxiliary propulsion drives in case some emergency arose with their main engines. He even contrives the rearrangement of living spaces among certain passengers, so as to remove the temptation of following through on old grudges while they are in such confined quarters.

Altruism is not his style, but even Loki is not a good enough liar to believe that altruism factored into it at all.

He makes his way to the navigation deck, where Heimdall has taken up his watch at the helm.

“My prince,” Heimdall says with a bow of his head, before turning his gaze back out the wide window of the bridge. “How may I be of service?”

There are pockets of danger in the great emptiness before them, the parts of their maps that would be labeled _Here there be bilgesnipes_ , if Asgard had never given up her spacefaring ways. Loki helps chart their route, calculates the fastest path through star systems, the patches of the universe where the fabric of existence is more susceptible to interspatial manipulation. Roads through the roots and branches of Yggdrasil, rarely tread upon.

The Realm Eternal had been greatly spoiled by the Bifrost’s convenience, and few others have made such a sport of finding the back alleys and secret passageways of the universe as Loki has, just to avoid Heimdall’s golden eyes.

“How goes our search, gatekeeper?” Loki asks.

“I have spotted a trading outpost not far from here, and not so out of our way,” Heimdall says. “Ten days out, if we can maintain our current speeds.”

He then pauses briefly, before, “I have not yet told your brother.”

Loki raises an eyebrow. “Any particular reason?”

“The King of Asgard is sleeping, for a change,” says Heimdall simply. “Setting a course can wait ‘til morning.”

So Loki isn’t the only one who’s been watching Thor. A trace of his thoughts must show on his face, as after a sideways glance, Heimdall continues, “It is not so easy to break the habit of centuries, particularly when I have neither reason nor inclination to do so. I have watched Thor grow and change, through all these years.”

He turns to face Loki fully. “I have watched you both change.”

Loki blinks, before turning away to avoid meeting that piercing gaze. Even keeping his words curt and his stance guarded, he’s sure Heimdall will divine more of his thoughts than Loki would prefer. Whether it’s magic or mere insight, he’s never been able to fool those eyes for long.

“Not always in ways that you approve of, I imagine?” he says, after a silence.

“Maybe so. But do not believe your recent work has gone unnoticed either, Loki,” says Heimdall.

Loki’s mouth twitches, barely holding back a scoff. “If you knew me at all, you’d know that’s not a compliment.”

Heimdall smiles.

“When you were younger,” he then says, leaning back against the railing, crossing his arms on his chest, “the two of you were always going off to parts unknown, sneaking to forbidden places you’ve been scolded to stay away from, simply because you were told not to. But eventually, when you had both pushed your luck the farthest it would go… When a bramble appeared in your path that neither of you could move, not with your words or your brother’s strength, did you both not call for me then?”

“Less and less, I’d say, as the years passed,” Loki says, not quite lying. He can’t very well argue the point too much when such a bramble had appeared so recently. “I never took you for the bragging type.”

“Not intentionally, no,” Heimdall replies, tilting his head thoughtfully. “I simply wish to say that I have cared for you both for a long time, and I do not plan on stopping anytime soon. If Thor has need of my help, I will give it gladly. But I am not the only support he has, nor is my aid always the one he needs.”

With not a little resentment, Loki asks, “And you just trust me to provide that aid, do you, after all I’ve done? To support my elder brother, just as our father intended?”

“That you are still here listening to an old man’s advice is all the assurance I need,” Heimdall says. “Asgard needs him as king, but he needs you by his side.”

“Oh, but the havoc I can wreak there,” Loki says in a quiet voice.

“Of course,” Heimdall says, and despite his better judgment, Loki turns and meets his eyes, cold as starlight. “But you have always the power to break your brother’s heart, no matter where you are.”

Loki’s breath catches for a moment, but only for a moment. He leans forward then, his hands gripping the railing. Out the window, the stars streak past them by the thousands. The quiet hum of the engines reverberate through the ship, as like the collective heartbeat of all those aboard.

Heimdall claps Loki on the shoulder, and makes to leave. “It is late, your Highness, and we have the ceremony tomorrow. Get some rest.”

*

It had been decided, shortly after their journey commenced, that when the most pressing issues of food and shelter had been sufficiently dealt with, they will hold a funeral for their dead.

Each attendant holds a lantern to their chest, a bright sphere of white light. They stand as a crowd in the shuttle deck, the landing bay doors held open. A gravitational force-field shimmers faintly between the interior of the ship and the void, a galaxy of light shining on either side.

A great pyre of blue flame burns in the middle of the deck, firewood from elm and oak saplings from Asgard, sprung forth by Idunn and her magicians. One last lantern for their homeworld.

At Thor’s signal, the pallbearers release their lanterns into the air, where they float away through the doors and into the endless expanse of space.

“We remember now every soul we lost,” says Thor, standing before the pyre at the forefront of the gathering. His people recite the words, small gods in prayer. “We bid you take your place in the halls of Valhalla...”

As they watch, the blue fire flares brightly, before slowly rising. It first dances through the air above them in a dazzling spiral, tongues of flame brushing through the crowd. It flies through the doors as great wings of fire to join the other countless points of light. As one, they dissipate into the bright sea of stars.

“...Where the brave shall live forever, nor shall we mourn but rejoice for those that have died the glorious death.”

Following the ceremony, they christen their ship with a real name— _Skidbladnir_.

There are festivities after, a great feast of the sort they would have held back on Asgard-that-was, raucous and lively as they promised their dead. Everyone undertakes the celebration in earnest, their voices loud in song and drink, covering silences that would otherwise be there, and the runaways from Sakaar are only too happy to join in.

The only one desperate not to enjoy himself is his brother.

Sitting at the head of the long table, Thor smiles, small, reserved smiles, unimaginably suffused with melancholy. Oh, he laughs at jokes well enough when expected to, and raises his glass at every toast, but the actions are perfunctory, obligatory. There is little effort to actually join the revelry, when he would have once regaled the whole table on his own with tales of his daring bravery, his dashing feats of strength, to take everyone’s minds off the true extent of what they’ve lost.

“Looks painful, doesn’t it,” says a voice over Loki’s shoulder.

There are not many that can sneak up on Loki unawares. The Valkyrie leans on the wall beside him, a couple of beers in hand.

Loki raises an eyebrow. “Can I help you?” he asks.

“Doubt it,” she says, tossing him an unopened bottle and uncapping her own.

Loki catches it, and bares his teeth in what might even be called a smile. “A purely social visit then. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Brunnhilde rolls her eyes, and takes a huge swig of her beer, finishing half of it in one go. As she wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand, she says, “So, I’m head of security, Norns help us, duty-bound to investigate anything that looks like it could be a threat. You’re over _here_ , lurking in the shadows and staring creepily at his Majesty. Is it on purpose, or can you just not help looking like a suspicious bastard all the time?”

With a flick of his wrist, Loki conjures a dagger into his hand, and cuts off the bottle-top. “I prefer to keep people guessing.”

She snorts. “Seriously, what is your family’s thing for melodrama?”

Loki shrugs, and takes a drink. “I’d say it’s genetic, if not for the obvious flaw in that hypothesis. Rest assured that I currently have no plots to betray my brother and take the throne for myself.”

“Operative word being currently,” Brunnhilde points out.

“I have no interest in being king of a broken kingdom,” Loki says. “No realm to rule over, my people a shadow of what they were—there is a certain style of kingship to which I’ve grown accustomed to, and I’m afraid I’m not willing to settle for anything less.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” she says, to Loki’s surprise. “But just because you don’t want to be king doesn’t mean I trust you not to start anything.”

Loki turns away, bringing his attention back to Thor across the hall. “My brother would be delighted at how seriously you’re taking your duties. Would it someday be enough to make up for all your past failures, you think?”

Brunnhilde gives him a once-over, her expression unimpressed. “You’re not nearly as mysterious as you think you are, your Highness.”

“And they tell me _I_ have a barbed tongue,” he says, with mock affront.

“All else fails I can always cut it out,” she says, smiling wide and suddenly brandishing a knife of her own. “But I’ll save that option for when you piss me off too much.”

“You wound me, truly. What can I say to convince you that I mean no ill?”

Brunnhilde shrugs, and puts her knife back in its sheath on her belt. “Nothing at all. You should’ve thought of that before you cultivated a reputation out of being a liar. I know enough not to listen to a word out of your mouth.”

“And yet you believe me,” Loki says, curious despite himself, “when I say I do not desire the throne.”

The Valkyrie laughs into her beer.

“Thor used to want to be king more than anything,” she says, wiping a tear from her eye, “and now that he wears the crown only out of _painful_ obligation, I’m meant to be surprised that his little shit of a brother no longer wants it either?”

Loki’s fingers twitch, a moment away from calling a knife back to his hand. But even if he didn’t already know he can’t take Brunnhilde in a straight melee, there are far too many witnesses in the feast hall for him to get away with it. From the knowing smirk on her face, she must’ve followed the path of his thoughts well enough.

“Like I said, your Highness,” Brunnhilde says, as she walks away to the common table, “not nearly as mysterious as you think.”

Loki lets a scowl show on his face. “If you ever feel like reminiscing about the old days, you know where to find me!” he calls out after her, not his best parting shot, but it garners him a rude hand gesture from the Valkyrie, so it isn’t his worse either.

His eyes follow her to where she sits near the head of the table, next to Banner and Korg and Thor, or at least the empty space where Thor had been sitting.

*

For as long as Loki can remember, he has been familiar with the sight of Thor’s back. His brother had always plowed on thoughtlessly, rushing in head-first into some ill-advised adventure, and Loki had always followed in his wake, grasping at the flow of his cape. He was caught in the gravity of his brother’s radiance, a blinding brightness that inspired love and resentment in equal parts.

It is only in recent years that their situations were reversed, that Thor had been the one chasing after Loki, so is it all that surprising that Loki should’ve enjoyed that turn in their fortunes, however briefly it seems to have lasted?

Loki moves from shadow to shadow, through the quiet, dimly lit halls of the ship, until he comes upon Thor’s quarters. The only source of light within are the stars, visible through the narrow viewing window at the far wall of the room, illuminating his brother’s silhouette. Thor is sitting at the edge of his bed, nursing some amber drink in hand.

As he enters into the room, letting his footsteps sound to announce his presence, Loki says, “It is not very becoming of a king to leave his own party at the earliest chance.”

Thor shoots him a quick glance, before he throws back his head and finishes his drink in one swallow. He looks briefly at the crystal tumbler, and then at Loki again, before he seems to think better of it and sets the glass on his bedside table.

“It is not my party,” Thor says, leaning back against the headboard and facing Loki at the foot of the bed. “And while I am their king, you are their prince. Do you not have the same responsibility to your people?”

“What makes a prince a prince is that he is not king,” Loki says plainly. He stalks forward, coming around to the side of the bed, until he stands over Thor. “Revelry and frivolity are important parts of ruling. You have to offer the people spectacle, distraction.”

“Maybe I am just a different sort of king, to believe in my people so. They are capable enough of distraction themselves,” Thor replies, and smiles at him, that small, sad smile that Loki‘s come to be so familiar with in recent weeks. Loki wants to carve it off his face.

“There are spells for sleeplessness,” Loki says instead, his knee coming up over the edge of the bed. “Spells for dreamless nights. Perhaps my king would like to forget, even if only temporarily.”

He holds out his hand, lets it hover over the side of Thor’s face. “To escape for a time, from the responsibilities of the crown.”

Thor doesn’t flinch away from the ghost of his touch. He simply looks up at Loki, his expression faintly lost.

It is not kindness that brings Loki to Thor’s room, that propels him forward now. He doesn’t know if he’s still capable of anything as uncorrupt as kindness. If he were truly perverse, Loki thinks, climbing forth onto the bed to straddle his brother’s lap, he would even call it love, if something so cruel and unforgiving can ever be called that.

The mattress dips beneath their weight. Loki traces the raised patterns on Thor’s eye-patch with his fingertips. It is love, sickly and unwell, because no other word suffices.

Nonetheless, this is a line they have never crossed. Thin green light follows the outline of his form, as a fire consumes parchment, and Loki shapeshifts into Jane Foster.

“Loki,” Thor says, a hint of warning in his voice, but makes no move to push him away.

Loki smiles coyly with his borrowed face and lets his hand brush against Thor’s neck. If words are ineffective, Loki thinks, maybe he can outrage Thor out of his spell of melancholy. “Comfort is in scarce supply these days. No one can blame you for taking it where you can find it, can they?”

When Thor gives only silence as his answer, Loki sighs, put-upon. Green light engulfs him once more.

“Was that wound still too fresh, then?” Brunnhilde’s voice asks.

Thor raises an eyebrow at his transformation, though his expression is markedly less severe than before. “The Valkyrie would skin you alive if she were to find you misusing her image like this.”

Loki sidles closer to Thor, their faces nearly touching. “That’s not any sort of accomplishment. It’s very easy to inspire her ire.”

“Sure, and if she is not as likely to direct that ire towards me as well for my involvement, I wouldn’t insist that you stop this, before it’s too late for either of us,” Thor replies, with that same damnable composure.

There is a pause as Loki parses his words. It’s still not a no.

“Fine.” A flash of green as he changes shape once more. “Is this what you’d prefer?”

Long, raven-black hair spills like a waterfall about his shoulders and down to his waist, free from its usual queue. Loki leans forward, holding Thor’s face between his hands. With this new form, taller than the previous ones, Thor has to tilt his head up to meet Loki’s hazel-green eyes.

Sif is not among their counted dead, but they do not know what has become of her either, and can only fear the worst.

At her appearance, something in Thor’s expression falls. He closes his eyes for a second, his mouth a thin line. Then he bows his head down and puts his hands to Loki’s waist, holding him in place. “Is this really your idea of comfort, little brother?”

“It is how you would’ve celebrated, in the past,” Loki answers in Sif’s familiar cadence, delicate and unyielding as steel. “Or is our continued survival not worth celebration? You are _wallowing,_ my lord.”

“If there was anyone who’d appreciate my unhappiness, I would have thought it’d be you,” says Thor, his forehead pressed upon Loki’s chest.

Loki strokes the nape of his neck. “Not when I am not the cause of it.”

Thor freezes for a moment. Then, slowly, he wraps his arms around Loki, pulling him into a tight embrace. Yet for all its intimacy, the action is oddly chaste, in a manner that their previous interaction had been lacking.

“There is no need for these disguises, Loki,” Thor tells him. “Are these masks for my benefit or yours?”

The grief in his voice is implacable, and Loki feels at that moment a hint of fear as the possibility presents itself–that this is something he cannot fix, even with all of his magic, all of his cunning.

Thor does not let him go, and hugs Loki even closer after his little brother lets the illusion fall away.

“This feels familiar,” Thor says. “Will you be pulling out a knife now, I wonder?”

Loki feels unmoored, as if the ground were shifting uncertainly beneath him. “At this point, I would welcome your distrust. It would be proof that you aren’t as stupid as you look.“

He feels Thor smile against his chest. “I wouldn’t be so sure. Do you know that story of the scorpion and the frog?”

Loki cards a hand though Thor’s brutally shorn hair. “The one where they cross a river?”

“Aye, though of late I have carried you this far on my back, so maybe it is our story no longer.”

“Or perhaps I am merely waiting for when the waters run the deepest,” Loki says, and does not know if it is a lie.

With a heave of his shoulders, Thor pulls Loki down to the bed so that they are both lying down on their sides, facing each other. His head is still at the level of Loki’s chest, his arms wound around his torso.

“If you believe it is in your nature, then it will be,” Thor says, his voice suddenly heavy with sleep. He closes his eyes as the drink catches up with him, or it may merely be the exhaustion of recent days.

“You are a fool, Odinson,” Loki replies, barely above a whisper, as he strokes the side of Thor’s face.

Thor doesn’t answer, doesn’t deny it. There is only the gentle rise and fall of his chest, his quiet breathing as he drifts off into slumber.

As a bright streak of stardust trails behind the ship like a comet’s tail, Loki lies there in the dark, listening to his brother dream. They haven’t fallen asleep together like this since they were children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 3 should be coming shortly! I stole a line from Soule's _Inhumans #7_ , because he had my other favorite jealous, disaffected royal brother say one of my favorite lines ever in comics. ✌


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